Following a visit to the King, the Belgian prime minister formally resigned after his Flemish Liberals and Democrats (Open VLD) party suffered huge setbacks in Sunday’s general election.
Until the formation of a new coalition of seven parties, which could take months, Alexander De Croo will act as caretaker prime minister.
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In accordance with custom, he submitted his resignation to Belgium’s King Philippe on Monday morning at the royal palace in Brussels.
The right-wing New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), which defeated its archrival, the far-right Vlaams Belang, to second place in the crucial Dutch-speaking Flanders province, is likely to form a new administration and lead surveys.
“For us, this is an especially trying evening. We lost. “As of tomorrow, I will resign as prime minister,” a visibly tearful De Croo told supporters Sunday.
“We wrote our obituaries, but we won these elections,” stated Bart De Wever, the leader of N-VA and the likely next prime minister of Belgium.
Local media predicts that the monarch will appoint De Wever as the chief negotiator by the end of the week, in accordance with the laws.
However, the French-speaking liberal party, Mouvement Reformateur, was the largest in Brussels and French-speaking Wallonia, putting the country on track for months of difficult coalition negotiations.
The outcome came on a day of triple elections for Belgians, who also voted in regional and European elections, with the far-right making the most gains, according to preliminary data.
With more than 90% of the votes collected, N-VA held a strong lead over Vlaams Belang, with De Croo’s party sliding to ninth place, according to incomplete figures posted on the interior ministry website.
According to provisional data published by the interior ministry, the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) kept first place with an expected 22% of the vote.
The Vlaams Belang finished second with 17.5% of the vote, ahead of the Socialist Vooruit party, which received roughly 10.5%.
De Croo’s party received fewer than 7% of the vote, placing it considerably behind the far left.
The seven-party governing coalition excludes N-VA and Vlaams Belang, both of which have anti-immigrant agendas and wish to partition Belgium.
Despite receiving 22% of the vote in the Flemish parliament and 14% in the federal parliament, Vlaams Belang appeared to remain out of power.
The anti-immigrant Eurosceptics had hoped that a strong performance would propel them into regional government, as ally Geert Wilders had done on the national arena in the Netherlands with a triumph last year. `1
